Telecommunications networks, such as wireless, wireline and data communication networks, are widely used to link various types of nodes, such as personal computers, servers, gateways, network telephones, and so forth. Networks may include private networks, such as local area networks (LANs) and wide area networks (WAN), and public networks, such as the Internet. Such networks can also be circuit-switched networks in which network resources are dedicated for the entire duration of a data call, and/or packet-switch networks, such as Internet Protocol (IP) networks in which network resources are shared and data in the form of packets or cells are routed independently across the networks along with other user traffic to a destination. Examples of packet-switched networks include Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM) networks, Ethernet or Frame Relay, which are based on a virtual circuit model. Popular forms of communications across such networks include electronic mail, file transfer, web browsing, and other exchange of digital data including audio (e.g., voice) and multimedia (e.g., audio and video).
Modern telecommunications networks typically include two related but separate network infrastructures: a bearer or transmission network for carrying end-user voice and data traffic, and a signaling network for controlling the setup and release of bearer channels through the bearer network in accordance with control signals transferred through the signaling network. In practice, such signaling networks comprise high-speed computers interconnected by signaling links, and computer programs implemented to provide a set of operational and signaling functions in accordance with a standardized protocol, such as, for example, the Signalling System No. 7 (SS7) which is being extensively deployed for control of mobile telephony and other data transmission networks. The signaling links are used for passing signaling information (e.g., messages) between nodes in the signaling networks. The signaling information (e.g., messages) can be captured to generate detail records, such as, Call Detail Records (CDRs) or Transaction Detail Records (TDRs) for storage in a database system which can be subsequently monitored and analyzed for a wide variety of applications, including, for example, quality of service applications and business intelligence applications. In addition to the detail records, other related information sent between nodes, switches or devices in such mobile networks can also be used for authentication, equipment identification and roaming enablement.
Commercially available tools for mobile telephony networks may be used for monitoring the performance (or quality) of a network based on the detail records stored in the database system to observe possible obstacles and track performance statistics in the network. Typically, such monitoring tools are based on monitoring the network for malfunctions at the level of network elements, such as switches or interfaces, for traffic-related information. However, such actions will result in the collection of vast amounts of data, which makes it difficult and time consuming for an end user attempting to identify problems in the network and perform analysis of the collected data. Further, the detail records, such as Call Detail Records (CDRs), are traditionally saved to a file or stored in memory for later transport to an analysis system, the transport being an automated process that takes place during a certain period or periods in a day. In other words, the CDRs are conventionally held in the monitoring system until a point in time in which the CDRs are deposited en masse into a CDR storage area. This makes it difficult for a user who wishes to monitor and analyze the mobile telephony network in real time, as the user has to wait for the CDRs to be deposited into the storage area, rather than having immediate access to the CDRs so that they may be analyzed in real time.
Accordingly, there is a need for improved tools, systems and methods for the management and analysis of detail records in such networks, including the ability to store the CDRs in a CDR storage area soon after a completion of a call, and to provide a user with a way to view the CDRs in real time.